How Paid Media Buyers Can Get an Edge in 2024

(The following post was written by Sam Tomlinson, EVP of Warschawski and one of the smartest marketing strategists operating today, and published on his blog. He’s kindly given us permission to reprint it here. Once you start reading, you’ll see why I believe everyone who subscribes to SparkToro should check it out. -Rand) The past three months have been jam-packed…

Content Marketing Needs to Evolve Beyond SEO

I’m tired of seeing blog posts, videos, webinars, articles, guides, resources, social posts whose entire raison d’etre is an attempt to rank for keywords in Google. It limits our creativity AND the likelihood that meaningful marketing improvements will happen. Content marketing is bigger than SEO. I’m tired of 99% of my LinkedIn feed pretending it’s not. This week’s 5-Minute Whiteboard…
Marketing Tactics

The Smarter-Not-Harder Guide to Content Marketing in 2024

Classic content marketing is dead. I don’t say that lightly. Most digital marketing techniques don’t truly die, but the old way of doing content marketing–finding high-volume keywords, then writing blog posts that target those keywords and trying to get your post ranking in Google for them; dead. Why? Because Google is no longer the primary or largest source of information…

Don’t just “Get a sense” for your customers. Make audience research actionable through revenue-lifting tactics.

There’s nothing wrong with running a quick SparkToro audience search, scrolling around for 5 minutes, and coming away savvier and better-informed about a group’s behaviors and demographics. But, if that’s all you’re doing with the tool’s output, you’re missing out. Instead of telling you, I’ll show you. Let’s use the example of Klaviyo.com; a company whose marketing automation, email segmentation,…
Marketing Tactics

You Are Your Moat

I don’t mind the generative AI craze. While some folks rail about the AI-generated comments that dominate their LinkedIn feed, I say, thank you for the engagement boost. Do these comments make social media a better place? Not really. But neither do the human-written, “Nice post, totally agree,” comments. (Though let’s be clear, I’ll take the harmless AI comments over…

Win the RFP: Nail Your Next Client Pitch With Audience Research

Why do in-house teams hire agencies or consultants? It’s almost always for two types of expertise: Tactical: Mastery of a specific tactic in a domain (e.g. handle all the Meta ads for your online shop) Domain: Deep knowledge of a given industry (e.g. PR strategy in the healthcare space) Clients expect these tasks to be done more efficiently and effectively…

Where Web Users Spend Time vs. Where Traffic Referrals Originate

“Most of our site’s traffic comes from Google, so most of our digital marketing efforts and spending should be on Google, too.” – An absolutely terrible way to invest in marketing On Monday of this week, I published a comprehensive look at how traffic flows on the American web. Unfortunately, some folks in the social feeds where this research was…